The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : From dyslexia to dizzying heights of career

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Saturday, Jan 31, 2009
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Tamil Nadu - Chennai

From dyslexia to dizzying heights of career

Staff Reporter

Conference sets record straight and throws up several important lessons worth learning

“It is essential to identify children with dyslexia during their formative years”

— Photo: K. V. Srinivasan

THOUGHT-PROVOKING: (From left) G. Balasubramanian, former director, CBSE, Lakshmi Radhakrishnan, chairperson, Madras Dyslexia Association and Lakshmi Narayanan, vice-chairman, Cognizant, at ‘Samyukth 09’ in Chennai on Friday.

Chennai: Amidst movies based on dyslexia and more organisations coming out to create awareness of the learning disability, a two-day conference ‘Samyukth 09’ started on an enlightening note in the city on Friday.

Hosted by the Madras Dyslexia Association (MDA), the conference on “Understanding children with learning difficulties and teaching them how to cope” was attended by psychiatrists, special educators and mainstream teachers.

“Dyslexia is not a road block. The child needs to be given care, support, understanding, and not sympathy. It is no way a depletion of intelligence,” said G. Balasubramanian, former director of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

Speaking about the role of schools, Mr. Balasubramanian said that in most cases a dyslexic child is not identified in the formative years. “If identified, 95 per cent can be rectified. Every teacher has to be trained. Let every school have a resource centre associated with MDA,” he said.

Lakshmi Narayanan, vice-chairman, Cognizant, cited examples of individuals in the corporate world who overcame dyslexia to excel in the field of technology.

Johnny Earl’s, chief information officer of Blinker, said passion for technology went unnoticed in school, where he was identified dyslexic at Class V. “Earl’s only complaint after he grew up fighting all the odds was that had he known earlier, perhaps he could have accomplished success a little earlier,” said Mr. Lakshmi Narayanan. Yet another example was that of another individual who started by working in a consulting firm and now has become the youngest vice-president of Bank of America, he said.

“It is essential to identify children with dyslexia during their formative years in such a way that the positive and negative aspects can be tracked and the impetus of the child can be identified,” said Mr. Narayanan.

Lakshmi Radhakrishnan, chairperson, MDA, said that more than 400 children from mainstream schools were helped and that would continue to be one of the centre’s main objectives. “Focus on adopting research and methods of the west in the Indian context will be given importance,” she added.

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